Two Roads Converged, Diverged, Then Converged Again
by Unoriginality
Summary: 50 1sentences about Steve and Bucky's lives, both together and a apart.


_#01 - Snow_

Bucky used to love the snow, usually dumping a handful down the back of Steve's shirt for a Christmas gift; after decades of being known as the Winter Soldier, he stopped wanting to have anything to do with the season that brought the snow.

_#02 - Child_

Steve was a sickly child, suffering through various illnesses and heart problems and asthma and a variety of other things; Bucky stayed by his side through every one of them, even at the risk of getting sick himself (scarlet fever was catching, after all).

_#03 - Brick_

The Winter Soldier got the very best of Hydra's weapons, including a sniper rifle that killed Fury through a brick wall.

_#04 - Judgment_

Hydra decided who was guilty or inconvenient, being judge and jury, and sending out the Winter Soldier to be their executioner.

_#05 - Powder_

The Winter Soldier's hands permanently smelled of gunpowder; Bucky could never quite wash it all off.

_#06 - Grim_

The Winter Soldier never smiled, not once, and when Bucky came home, he always had a grim expression; Steve did what he could to make his friend smile, but it rarely worked, so Steve treasured the times it did.

_#07 - Trap_

Bucky was trapped behind the Winter Soldier, not exactly dead, but hardly alive, either; for years, the Winter Soldier had control, until they encountered Steve on the bridge, and Bucky began to fight back.

_#08 - Star_

As kids, Steve and Bucky liked to look at the stars; once they were grown and Bucky had come home after the long nightmare known as the Winter Soldier, he noticed that the city had grown and put off too much light for them to look at the stars anymore.

_#09 - Possession_

When Bucky came to Steve's door, asking for forgiveness and a place to come home to, he had very few possessions: his uniform that was worn under baggy clothes that he'd stolen from a Goodwill, and a combat knife that he immediately asked Steve to take away from him.

_#10 - Bandage_

Steve was like a bandage, treatment of an old wound when Bucky came back to him, a year later, and slowly, Bucky began to heal.

_#11 - Pearl_

Pierce called him a hero, his work to the world a treasure, and that kept the Winter Soldier from rebelling, gave him reason to not kill them all and run; it wasn't until decades later, when Bucky recognized Steve and realized he had more to live for than just Hydra's orders, orders that pitted him against his friend, that he decided to leave and find his own place in the world.

_#12 - Glass_

Way back when Bucky and Steve were kids, Christmas ornaments were made from glass, but in the modern times, they were mostly made from cheap plastic that masqueraded as glass.

_#13 - Classified_

The files on the Winter Soldier were classified, but that hardly stopped Steve from getting his hands on them through Natasha's help, hoping that knowing more would help him find and save his friend.

_#14 - Buttons_

While Steve's shiny new Captain America uniform that the army had made for him was mostly zippers and catches, Bucky's had far too many buttons for his liking.

_#15 - Closet_

Even years later, after he'd retired from his Winter Soldier persona, comfortably back in Bucky's skin, he kept his Winter Soldier uniform hanging up in the closet; should Steve ever have to go out and fight again, Bucky would be able to come with and fall back to his training to help.

_#16 - Ash_

After discovering who he originally was, what Hydra had done to him and taken away from him, the Winter Soldier went to the laboratory he was built in and burned it to the ground.

_#17 - Definition_

In a depressive fit, Bucky had declared himself a monster for his work for Hydra, and Steve had replied that it depended on his defintion, pointed out that he'd done horrible things too in the name of what he thought at the time was good; it was just something soldiers did.

_#18 - Staircase_

For every step Bucky took up the stairs to Steve's apartment, his inner voices warred between the desire to run and never face anyone again, especially his dearest friend that he'd almost killed, and the desire to see Steve, to ask forgiveness, to find a way to be Bucky again, mind whole and healed.

_#19 - Nail_

"Ow, damnit Bucky, that was my thumb," Steve protested as Bucky worked to hammer a nail on their new fort- much more effective than couch cushions- in Bucky's back yard; Bucky apologized, feeling terrible for hurting his friend (Steve had enough problems without Bucky bruising his finger).

_20 - Prey_

The Winter Soldier did not see his missions as people, but inconveniences that needed to be taken out before the prey became the hunter and Hydra found itself in trouble.

_#21 - Backwards_

Saving Captain America from the waters of the river was in complete contradiction to his mission, to his usual nature, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything else, feeling too much whoever the person the captain claimed he'd been before.

_#22 - Trouble_

For being a little guy with rare hope of winning fights, Steve always found trouble and it was always up to Bucky to save him; it was both endearing and frustrating, but Bucky wouldn't have his friend be anyone else.

_#23 - Little_

As Bucky- yes, Bucky, he knew that now- explored the rest of the Captain America exhibit, little things began to come back to him, just a bit at a time.

_#24 - Collar_

Hydra held a tight collar on the Winter Soldier, but Bucky remembered one much looser with the American army once he became one of Captain America's Howling Commandos, and now that he was home, there was no collar at all.

_#25 - Circle_

They'd come full circle, from friends, to enemies, and now once again friends, healing together from old wounds and scars.

_#26 - Hands_

Steve's hands used to always be cold due to his poor circulation, and Bucky's were always warm; decades later, Steve's hands were only cold when he went out in the winter without gloves on, but one of Bucky's hands was perpetually cold.

_#27 - Freedom_

If freedom meant having nothing to lose, then Steve and Bucky would never be free; they stood to lose each other if Hydra ever decided to come after them.

_#28 - Last_

Steve was always the last one picked for teams in gym class, and Bucky always made sure he was picked for his own team so he could help Steve from getting swarmed under by bigger student athletes.

_#29 - Scab_

The Winter Soldier was like a scab that Bucky liked to pick at, guilt and regret plaguing him and leaving scars; both Steve and Sam tried to counsel him out of the habit, but it took a long time before those lessons sank in.

_#30 - Crown_

Hydra controlled the world, an underground king, and the Winter Soldier helped put them there, erasing problems and instigating wars by assassinating just the right person; saving Captain America was his first act of defiance and his last order from the king.

_#31 - Time_

Time had passed Steve by, took everything good and precious to him, but further time revealed that not everything had disappeared; all he had to do was find Bucky again and convince him to come home.

_#32 - Rice_

Steve enjoyed trying new foods that _weren't_ boiled to a soggy mess, and found that he liked fried rice at the nearby Chinese restaurant; as soon as Bucky felt up for it, Steve dragged him there to sample the food (Bucky turned out to like the orange chicken, which was a bit too spicy for Steve's liking).

_#33 - Worn_

Steve redonned his original Captain America uniform that he stole from the Smithsonian; it was a little worn around the edges, but it felt like a comfortable old skin to slip back into.

_#34 - Paint_

Steve had always been good at drawing, a talent he had as long as Bucky knew him, but Bucky had no idea Steve had picked up painting and was making a little extra cash selling his work after SHIELD was taken down and Steve was left living a civilian life.

_#35 - Ache_

The Winter Soldier spent most of his time in cryofreeze, so he'd never hand much of a chance to notice how the weather might affect his arm beyond 'would it shut it down'; Bucky started to notice weather changes made the bone the metal was attached to ache like an old scar might.

_#36 - Cherry_

Lifesavers were one of a small handful of candies that Bucky still recognized from their youth; whenever Steve would pick up a roll, Bucky would immediately hoard all the cherry-flavored ones, leaving mostly just lemons behind for Steve (Steve didn't tend to appreciate that).

_#37 - Library_

After the Smithsonian, Bucky's first stop was the library to find more information than the blurb on the memorial, to learn about his life, and quickly realized he wouldn't find much of anything that was before the war; the only memories of his childhood he'd get would be with Steve's help.

_#38 - Win_

When Steve came out of the ice, he learned that they'd won the war, but not a single war since had been won in any sense of the word; the world lost more and more integrity with each passing battle and Steve wasn't sure wanted anything to do with it anymore.

_#39 - Loss_

Steve handled the death of his mother with as much grace as he could; he only crumpled when Bucky convinced him to let him stay the night and Bucky threw the couch cushions on the floor.

_#40 - Fold_

Steve noticed, with great consternation, that Bucky's pokerface had become even more placid than it'd been when they were younger and playing card games, and since Steve's pokerface was, by contrast, terrible, he was always left folding and losing the game.

_i#41 - Music_

Steve had tried modern music, but he still preferred the music he knew from his time, collecting old vintage records that were getting harder to find, even with the internet's help.

_#42 - Bell_

Since the 1930s when the song was hijacked for the holiday, Steve's favorite Christmas carol was Carol Of The Bells.

_#43 - Sleep_

Bucky rarely got good sleep during the first year of living with Steve, wandering their apartment aimlessly in an attempt to quiet his thoughts so he could go back to bed; Steve usually stayed up with him to keep him company, despite Bucky's protests that they shouldn't both have to be tired the next day.

_#44 - Contact_

Bucky wasn't used to contact, but Steve had always been somewhat tactile, and neither man in the past had been afraid of affection, but it still took Bucky awhile to get used to being touched after so long of isolation.

_#45 - Electricity_

Bucky's arm was run by tiny computers and fine-tuned electronics, but the metal coverings were so effective that following Steve into the Potamic to rescue him hadn't shorted anything.

_#46 - Milk_

When the Winter Soldier went to Pierce's house for further instructions, he'd made Pierce nervous enough that he offered some milk, knowing it'd be turned down without a word; the Winter Soldier knew Pierce had control, but even with Pierce calling the shots, his boss was afraid to be around him without a bunch of guns trained on him in case he went out of control.

_#47 - Wild_

Bucky and Steve had never gotten to camp out under the stars before they joined the army, but with all the missions spent in the fields, they got plenty of time to listen to the wilds around them while trying to get sleep.

_#48 - Expectation_

Steve assured Bucky at every turn that he'd make it, he'd remember more and be okay again someday, but Bucky thought Steve had too high expectations for him.

_#49 - Mechanism_

Steve couldn't begin to understand the mechanisms used to keep Bucky's arm active, and Bucky only vaguely knew how they worked, so Steve dragged him to the greatest engineer in modern history, Tony Stark.

_#50 - Finale_

Just as they'd promised each other, Steve and Bucky stayed together to the end of the line.


End file.
